


The World Knows to Stay Away from You

by Kitsubasa



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 20:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15670473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsubasa/pseuds/Kitsubasa
Summary: Vlad is managing his bloodlust badly, but Nero and Elizabeth are on the case -- they'll cure his vampirism or kill him trying.





	The World Knows to Stay Away from You

It was unbearable.

Clutching his hand tighter around the stem of his glass, Vlad dug his nails into his palm. His eye tooth -- canine -- fang -- poked into the corner of his lip. Neither drew blood, but that was hardly surprising. There wasn’t much to draw.

He threw the dregs of his wine down his throat and forced his grip onto the cutlery instead, sawing through some sort of reheated casserole with chicken cut too large to finish in a bite. The carrots were fine. The beans, though, they squeaked. 

This wasn’t a good distraction. He was trying to  _ forget  _ how much he needed to eat, and any apprehension toward his human meals made him crave… no, he had to forget. But this spread had no flavour, and all chewing it did was grind his oversized teeth and remind him there were other options.

The Chaldea cafeteria was always empty at this hour. Servants were either hungry by nature and queued five perfect minutes before plate, or uninterested in eating altogether. Emiya and his kitchenhands had long since boxed the evening’s leftovers and put them in the freezer for latecomers. It was clean and still but for a flickering strip light and a few rinsed-but-unscrubbed dishes by the sink. 

A pity. Vlad would’ve liked to know who botched this meal. If their head chef had a hand in it, it would’ve been immaculate, chopped finer than an Ottoman vanguard, but someone --  _ someone  _ \-- had been granted a promotion to sous-chef they did not yet deserve.

Wiping his lips with a rough paper napkin, he stared into the slurry left on his plate. The staff would have to be told. 

Hands steepled, he remained at the table, centered and alone in the cavernous room (seating for several hundred) as he went over the list of those permitted to use the stovetops and friers. Cu. Gawain. Nightingale. Any of them could’ve done it. None of them could be trusted.

He swallowed, and his throat was so dry --

Another spoonful of regrettable casserole. Something damp. It honed his rage. Nightingale prioritised nutrition over taste. Gawain mashed everything. Cu didn’t know how to season. Or perhaps it had been Marie, trying to provide for her people, undo her mistakes; careless as ever. Mordred wanting a knife after Clarent was confiscated following too many fights with Artoria.

Possibilities, possibilities.

In the far corner where the yet more lights had burst and Edison hadn’t been goaded into replacing them, there was movement. Slouching in with neither her usual pep nor her usual boots, Elizabeth waved to Vlad, yawned, and continued to the fridge.

“Elizabeth,” he said, and it echoed.

“Vlad,” she replied, taking a bottle of milk and looping around to his table.

He pointed at the casserole with a clawed forefinger. “Who did this?”

She followed his finger to the plate. “It was a good try. Can’t say no to free --”

_ “Who?” _

Gulping while taking a swig of milk to pretend she wasn’t nervous, she nodded toward the dorms. “If you try to kill him Gudako will be mad, so don’t try to kill him. Cu was on duty.” Clenching her free hand and regaining some confidence, she thrust the bottle toward his nose. “She can’t confiscate your teeth or your stakes so I don’t know what she’d do to you.”

He ran his fork into the last lump of chicken and left it standing upright. “If you insist.” He meant it to sound sly, to assuage her worries, but there was unintended tension between the words. Perhaps because he had just stabbed something.

“Please?” She widened her eyes and pouted.

His tongue felt like a leather bit inside his mouth. “Of course, Elizabeth --” It was as if he hadn’t eaten at all. Through his stomach, along his esophagus, in his throat; scorched and twisted like a sword under a hammer before quenching. “-- Elizabeth --” His eyes had enough moisture to glaze over.

“Uh, Vlad?” She leaned over the table to look in his face.

The air got drier the closer she came. It was sandpaper, it was sand, it was a desert. But deserts have oases and he could perfectly divine where the nearest was. That neck, trying to hide beneath a choker and lace. Wicked of her. Wicked. 

With a click like a broken door his jaw unhinged and he swung his fangs toward the nearest strip of uncovered skin.

Elizabeth shrieked and hit him with the bottle, stopping the lunge and giving her room to escape. “Vlad, stop!”

Slipping from his bench he pursued with claws brandished and fangs bared.

Hopping over the tables in the most direct path to the exit she ran as fast as possible, wings keeping her steady.

He grabbed at her tail and pounced across the furniture.

In the ten seconds it took them to reach the door a third figure entered the frame. “Get away from her!” He swung the butt of his spear past Elizabeth in a wide arc, clocking Vlad in the jaw and halting the chase.

Dazed on the floor, Vlad scratched deep lines in the linoleum and hissed at the figure.

Tapping his spear beside him, Elizabeth’s savior stepped into the nearest unbroken light. Cu. Brilliant. “That’s not how you treat a lady, Dracula.”

Claws dug deep, back arched, he locked himself into place until the thirst subsided to where it’d been; painful but manageable. Eyes on the ground he focused on breathing and keeping his cheeks from going too red. Servants didn’t need to eat, with a single, embarrassing exception. It seemed no amount of human food could substitute for -- for --  _ human _ . And now he’d --

“Forgive me.”

“That’s up to her. Wanna forgive him, Liz?”

Behind Cu, Elizabeth clutched her skirts and forced her breathing back toward normal. “Vlad.” She couldn’t manage better than shock and horror.

His breathing under control, Vlad slung himself into a crouch and looked at Cu. “Your intervention was --”

He ran his spear along his shoulders and hooked his wrists over it as though he were in the stocks. “We’re gonna have to tell Gudako. Chaldea’s getting crowded, and…” his eyes lingered on Vlad’s half-eaten casserole “... hard enough for her and Da Vinci to manage without fights to settle. You get it, yeah?”

“Do we have to?” Elizabeth’s hands fluttered from her skirts and onto the blunt end of the spear, upsetting Cu’s stance.

“Liz, c’mon.”

“He’s been bad, but he didn’t mean to be! I --” She looked at Vlad.

Hunched, covering his mouth. Biting the inside of his index finger as though it were a pacifier. He rocked onto his toes and rushed past them, coats and tunic and scarves and hair whipping behind wide enough to hit as he passed. “This is my cross to bear,” he declared to the corridor, and it echoed ahead and behind, to the cafeteria he’d left and the atrium he was heading toward.

As the footstepless  _ whoosh  _ faded, Cu and Elizabeth turned to each other.

“He needs help.”

“Was the cross bit meant to be ironic?”

“ _ My  _ help.” Elizabeth struck a forceful pose. “I’m going to help him!”

“With what? Not being a vampire?” 

She nodded just as forcefully.

“That’s not how, ah --” He swung the spear from his shoulders and leaned into it, self-conscious. “-- he is who he is. Like if Gudako got Mad King Cu, that’s who I’d be. She’d have to throw him into the Grail and luck out to get him back. Even then, that Stoker book left a bigger legacy than anything he actually did, so.”

She shook her head with the greatest force of all.

Bristling, the shorter hair on his head standing a little higher, Cu shifted from his lean and continued out. “If you insist.”

When didn’t she?

  
  


XXX

  
  


Rinsing his hands for the fourth time in the sink of his fourth ensuite, Vlad couldn’t help but look in the mirror. The circles around his eyes were lighter than they’d been, his skin less pallid. He splashed water on those too. Would that the basin were sanctified. 

He’d removed his overcoat and some other extraneous layers, but as soon as he was done washing, he slipped into the adjoining room and threw his scarf back on. Force of habit. His castles had been cold, and what he’d seen of the world outside the institute seemed much the same. There was no trusting the little white heating boxes around the complex. Comfort lay in furs and fires, the latter of which were not acceptable in this era. And so…

Walking from that bedroom along the once-public corridor to the next -- which he’d repurposed as a war room -- he sat at the desk and leaned over his current map as though there was something to learn from it. 

He stayed there a while, until anxiety overtook him and he pawed at his mouth.

Clean, but, what was the line in that fool play Shakespeare showed everyone?

_ Out damned spot. _

He pawed again.

Forcing his hands flat on the map he resolved not to do it anymore.

He was reaching for a third go when there was a clicking and a clanking in the corridor. His private corridor. No visitors permitted, for their own safety. “I cannot enter your property uninvited,” he said to the door, “so you should not enter mine. Who dares trespass?”

Two small faces poked around the frame and smiled at him.

“Dracula, Prince of Wallachia!”

“Uncle Vlad!”

“We’ve come to your aid!”

Stomping a foot each into the room, Nero and Elizabeth, in their fanciest ceremonial dresses, tried to look heroic. Nero almost succeeded, her lion pauldron adding bulk and nobility to her silhouette, but whatever Elizabeth did couldn’t distract from the toy pig on her hat.

“If you’d arrived half an hour earlier you would’ve been greeted by an unwelcome sight,” he said, some of his tension leaving now he knew it wasn’t Cu or Gudako here to erase him from existence. “Heed the warnings outside, Empress.”

Nero smirked back at him. “Warnings are for cowards, umu.” Moving properly into the room, she folded her arms. “I hear you lost control. That’s not very becoming of royalty.” Then she unfolded them and pointed straight at him. “Luckily Eli explained why, and so: I’ve magnanimously decided to cure your vampirism.”

Of course she had. He flattened his feet on the floor and assumed an unimpressed slouch. “You didn’t tell her it was impossible without having Gudako send me to the Grail?” he asked Liz.

She shook her head. “There has to be a way!”

Digging into the folds of her dress Nero produced a scroll, thrust it above her head, and -- once she was certain she had their attention -- unrolled it to show the contents. She’d drawn several diagrams in red ink which Elizabeth had then commented in magenta. “We’ve already thought of some solutions. Behold! Our incredible plans!”

None of the diagrams were very clear, especially once Elizabeth’s comments were factored in, but there was a cube involved, and something about throwing a book at Robin. “This makes no sense.” He tried his best to make it sound like a condemnation rather than a question.

“Here I thought you were a tactician,” Nero said, closing the scroll. “I shouldn’t be disappointed -- it takes an unequaled genius to maintain an empire like mine! You’ll just have to trust us that these plans are so brilliant you can’t even understand them.”

“Can you explain the cube, at least?”

Her grin wasn’t quite wicked, not like his could be, but it was close. “We can  _ show  _ you the cube. Eli, take us to Mash.”

  
  


XXX   
  
  


The four of them stopped in front of the darkest door on the lowest level of Chaldea. “This was where they put the building supplies, but I don’t understand --”

“No-one understands.” Moving past Mash, graciously twisting to avoid hitting her with her pauldron, Nero entered the gloomy room. “Vlad! Eli!” There was a guiding flash of gold inside.

Elizabeth followed with a little tip of the hat to Mash.

Vlad was last, as confused as their guide but loathe to show it.

Once he was inside, she gave the group a bow and scurried up the staircase back to the inhabited parts of the facility. Her footsteps faded fast and left them alone in a room full of…

A room full of concrete slabs and raw insulation foam, garnished with an overturned wheelbarrow in the corner. His eyes adjusted to low light without any trouble. There still hadn’t been any explanation for why they were here or what they needed.

Nudging her shoes through the waste Nero reached some sort of canvas-covered mound and lifted the fabric from it with a satisfying  _ fwoom _ . Grabbing something with one hand she dropped the canvas back. Hiding the object behind her she returned to them with the same methodical shuffle-step. “Are you ready, Prince?”

“Just show me, Empress.”

As if passing him a newborn, she gave him a brick.

He turned it in his hands with much less care. “This --” what was he supposed to do with this? Give it to someone to throw at him? Use it as a doorstop? How was it to solve his problems? “-- this is a brick.”

“Correct,” she said, “a brick. Like me, dependable, a builder of houses, a foundational part of society. And, according to Da Vinci, a critical tool for stopping vampires.” She gestured from her hands to her mouth. “Eat it and you’ll be cured.”

Bricks were not edible. He stared at it, wondering if she knew, reluctant to ask.

“The idea,” Elizabeth said, flanking him, “is you’ll break your teeth and then you won’t be able to bite and it’ll solve our problem.”

No. He couldn’t. He looked between the girls and let his arms drop to his sides. “The hunger will remain, and my claws are sharp enough to sate it.”

She rocked onto her tiptoes. “When Nero’s done we’ll get some pliers and --”

Nero swept her hand aside to gesture for Aestus Estus. It appeared a golden flash, filling the room, dazzling him. “We did our research. We made an effort. Honour our sacrifice and put the brick in your mouth or return to the Grail, Prince.”

The beheading which ended his first life had left enough of an impression that threatened with another he obeyed on instinct. Swinging his brick-bearing arm to his face he opened his jaws wide… wide… wide…

Wide as a python, until he could fit the whole brick inside, even though it stood upright. Slotting it in place he kept his teeth pressed to either end like a labrador on the hunt. None of them broke. It would’ve been comical if the joint between his jaws hadn’t distended several inches past where it should’ve been in utter defiance of human biology.

The girls stared.

Until Nero grabbed the brick, yanked it out, and broke the awful suspense. “That was disgusting.” She threw it to the far corner, snapping the timber plank where it landed.

Vlad’s mouth shrank to its regular size. He thumbed his right fang. Blunted. “It chipped --”

“We’re trying our second plan!” She walked into the dim light of the hall, refusing to acknowledge him.

Elizabeth stood with him until he was done feeling his teeth. “It  _ was  _ a good idea, though,” she said, “she’s almost as smart as we are, having her with us was an excellent choice, if I do say so myself.”

“You involved her.”

“My choices are excellent. Come on, Vlad, the next idea was mine.” She tugged his cuff onward.

He followed, cheeks aching, unsure whether it would get progressively worse, or that the brick was an outlier in an otherwise sensible list.

Her smile back at him as they crossed the threshold gave him confidence it was the former.

  
  


XXX   
  
  


Chaldea’s lounge could’ve been a nice room if it hadn’t been taken over by a combination of Hans, Tesla, Waver, their collective paperwork, and a regular rotation of guest academics eager to engage in violent debate about literature, science, or magic -- depending which day of the week it was. Today was Sunday, their weekly armistice, and the trio were fortified in their corners with piles of books and their drinks of choice. Everything was quiet, save for an occasional grumble from Waver about limited sources in the current apocalyptic climate.

That was, of course, about to change, as Nero powered into the room with a captive in each hand.

Dragged to her right was Jeanne, held by the sleeve, confused and faintly curious.

To her left, held by the tail of his haori, was a serene Amakusa.

On the sofa awaiting Nero’s return, Vlad steepled his hands and bent his face in them to hide a flush of embarrassment, while Elizabeth clapped in excitement.

“Exorcists!” Nero declared with a flourish, releasing her captives just in front of them.

Something dawned on Jeanne’s face. “That’s what you wanted us for?”

Amakusa raised an eyebrow. “Why else would someone pick the pair of us?”

“To -- referee a tennis match? There’re plenty of uses for Rulers,” she said, “I don’t even know how to perform an --”

“Who would I use as an alternative? Sanzang? She’s useless at following orders, umu. I needed obedience. Diligence. Respect.” Sitting between Vlad and Elizabeth even though the gap wasn’t quite large enough (and her pauldron hit Elizabeth square in the face), Nero crossed her legs. “Now! Cure this man of his curse.”

There was a moment of unspoken reluctance between Vlad, Amakusa, and Jeanne, until Amakusa stepped closer with a small sigh and tidied his ponytail over his shoulder. “Bring me candles, knives, and salt.”

“Shopping trip!” Nero shot from the sofa as quickly as she’d sat, took Amakusa’s haori where she’d held it before, and ran them in the direction of the kitchen.

As soon as they were gone the remainder of the group exhaled in awkward relief. 

“Why does she want us to exorcise you?” Jeanne asked Vlad, taking an armchair nearby. It gave an old, leathery creak.

“Vampirism,” he said, more mortified than usual, eyes glazed over as he prayed for his entire spirit to leave his body and not just the wicked part of it. “She refused to tell me what she had planned.” Slipping his fingers out across the remainder of his face he hunched forward, elbows on his knees. “This is exactly the kind of behaviour I’d sworn from.”

“Kidnapping?” 

He swallowed and found his throat was dry. His last ‘proper’ meal had been sickly and stale. Quality stock could keep him for a day but… lesser… stock had variable nutritional value. “Harassing the clergy.”

“Amakusa and I haven’t been ordained,” Jeanne said, as though that were the point, “in fact, I’m not sure either of us are supposed to perform exorcisms.”

“Semantics.” Regaining his composure, he uncovered his face and pulled his spine straight. “Our Europe was not a pretty place.”

She raised an eyebrow, though her fringe hid it. “That doesn’t excuse what you did to it.”

“No. I don’t expect it to. I merely…” he looped his fingers together.

She angled herself toward him.

“Do you have any idea how long I spent trying to insure the sanctity of my soul? How many monasteries I built, how many hours I knelt in them. The instructions I left for my burial, ‘pry up the floorboards and put me under the altar’, guarantee as many centuries of blessings as a man could hope for.”

Elizabeth shuffled aside and curled around the far arm of the sofa, casting an anxious glance behind her.

“None of it mattered.” His hair seemed to writhe around his shoulders, and the dark around his eyes grew darker. “There was a monk. A single monk. He scoffed at all the effort and condemned me to Hell for how I kept my country. He said that if ever I found eternal life it would be life with the devil.” His irises filled red and his fangs flashed, the blunted tip almost regrown. “Whether you were ordained or not won’t help, because nothing will, nothing has.”

He leant from his seat, just close enough to Jeanne to make her flinch away -- though she gave nothing more than a flinch, no ground to this monster. Though they’d tried to set it aside Orleans lurked in both their minds and they both knew who would hold through any fight they had.

His gaze cooled. He fell back, a relatively ordinary man again, and covered his cracking lips. “Excuse me. The Grail did this as punishment, and Chaldea is penance. God wants me to see it through.”

“Then why are you accepting their help?” She pointed at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth shied from the attention.

“Because --” Vlad turned to her, expression softening. He hid his claws in the buttoned dents of the sofa. 

“Nero’s pushy, huh?” she said with a meek smile.

“Nero is pushy,” he lied with her, “she made a plan, she’ll keep us to it to the end.”

“We’ve got candles!” Speak of the devil. 

In fact, Amakusa had candles, and butter knives, and several plastic tubes full of salt, gathered in his kimono sleeves like a makeshift shopping bag. He dumped them on the rug by the sofa, then grabbed a tube of salt and began pouring a sigil across the nearest bare floor.

After a few seconds observing the criss-crossing salt lines, Waver stood from his desk in the corner, and mimed at the other researchers to leave the room.

Their exodus complete, Nero gave a satisfied nod. “Apparently this is dangerous. Eli, you might wanna leave with them.”

Elizabeth stood and raised a hand for her. “If you’re seeing it through, I am too!”

She clasped it. “Good! Otherwise I’d call you a coward, umu.”

Finished with the core lines, Amakusa began writing a Latin inscription around the circle, still in salt. As he went he glanced to Jeanne and Vlad. “Can either of you read it, or shall I --?”

Neither of them could.

“-- it’s for banishing evil spirits. I suppose Zhuge Liang and Tesla were worried that might mean them,” he couldn’t help but laugh, “but we’re in good company here. It shouldn’t harm any of us God-fearing people. This will be fine.” For some reason, the room didn’t seem reassured, but if Jeanne was unable and unwilling…

Vlad stepped into the center of the circle and waited as Amakusa lit the candles at points on the sigil. The second-to-last candle came too close to the train of his coat, so he stepped out for a moment, pulled it off, then stepped in again. “Do I need to do anything?” he asked in the steadiest voice he could manage.

“Hold still and be quiet,” Amakusa said with a comforting smile.

The girls sat on the sofa in a spellbound cluster, Nero’s pauldron still threatening Elizabeth’s nose with every move. 

Staking the knives one by one around the array, Amakusa began to chant in a skew sort of Latin, some of his words pronounced as though he’d never heard them aloud before. There were salutations, blessings, invocations of the Holy Trinity; Vlad knew enough church process to guess what stage the ceremony was at even if the words weren’t in Old Church Slavonic, and Nero knew enough Latin to interpret the meaning despite her Pagan perspective.

Slowly the light spread from the candles to the circle, following the order it’d been drawn and glowing dull white. It quivered as it passed Vlad’s feet, and he danced from left to right with a slight downturn to the side of his mouth. “Strange,” he said, “like real fire.” He couldn’t quite settle his heels on it, so he kept on his toes.

Amakusa continued to smile.

The light completed and grew taller, the faint white base flaring into a taller red with orange and yellow peaks.

As Vlad tried to avoid the makeshift flames he found himself unable to move. “What?” he hissed.

“Relax. You’re being purified.” 

But the flames tingled and spread to his clothes. 

Flailing from her seat Elizabeth threw her arms in the air and motioned for Amakusa to “stop, stop!” She got between him and the circle. “What’re you doing?”

“Oh no,” Amakusa said, “he’s rotten to the core. I suppose this is going to melt him. Is it really such a waste, though? Gudako can resummon him when she’s ready.” He raised his palms in defeat and the flames rose higher in accordance. The knives trembled in their places.

It hurt. Vlad bit on his tongue and denied himself the luxury of screaming, tearing at his boots with his nails and trying to pull them from the ground. None of it worked. He let out a caterwaul instead to show some -- measure -- of -- ferocity --

The flames were to his waist like a witch stuck on a pyre. 

Elizabeth glanced at him as his coat burned from the hem upward, flicking closer and closer to his torso, then with a furious shout, shoved Amakusa backward. “Let him out!”

He staggered but stayed on his feet. “What do you think Gudako’ll do if I don’t? He’s dangerous! Not like Mordred, not like any of the others! Even that heathen minotaur’s less of a beast than him!” Pumping his hands skyward the flames raised over Vlad’s head.

She couldn’t let him. Balling her fists, she threw her entire weight behind a messy right hook and landed it right in Amakusa’s jaw.

That messed his posture.

An instant later she swung her tail around and knocked his legs clean from under him.

He went down.

No longer entertained by the show, Nero stood from the sofa, strode to the edge of the circle, raised a foot, and kicked through the flames into Vlad’s hip.

That did it -- he fell out of the array, knocking some candles as he went, and landed with his toes stuck in the fire.

Jeanne skirted around the side and pulled him the last few inches clear, then stomped the ashes of his coat until they stopped burning.

On the ground with Elizabeth looming over him Amakusa laughed. “Rejoice! He is saved!” Scooping his hands into the floorboards he pulled himself out of her shadow until he had room to stand.  “How do you expect him to heal, though?” Onto his feet, he braced himself with the arm of the sofa, found his balance, and walked out of the room. “If he can’t take a blessing, you know what he’ll take instead.”

As soon as Amakusa exited, the array faded, the flames disappeared, and the knives fell from their points.

Elizabeth joined the others at Vlad’s side, but she kept watching the hall, and the disappearing cascade of white-and-red near the end of it. “Is he --?”

“Hurt,” Jeanne said, “but -- not badly, not for him.”

His mouth creaked open, lips gone from cracked to crisped. “I need to Rayshift.”

“But Doctor Archaman --"

“To Orleans. Take me there. It’s -- vitally important --” He crawled onto his arms, exposed by his burnt sleeves and pitted with bloodless grey wounds. Whatever spittle was left in his mouth extruded between his teeth.

Grabbing one of his shoulders Elizabeth struggled to pull him onto his feet, neither of the others helping, and once she’d succeeded, half-dragged him out in the direction of the main halls.

Nero and Jeanne watched them go, both silent.

  
  


XXX

  
  


A piece of black canvas hooded over his face and wound around his arms, Vlad skulked the muddy streets of Lyon. The gouges he’d clawed in his boots let the muck in, smeared it against his shins. Barely enough of his tunic remained to keep him decent. His best chance at luring a victim would be acting the beggar, and yet -- he kept his shoulders back, his chin high, his eerie red sclera letting anyone who crossed his path know he wasn’t there to be pitied.

Maybe it was too late to catch anyone. The little stone houses had dim windows and however loudly the people inside snored or tossed their sheets, gave themselves away, he couldn’t broach them. Up and down the streets he crept, legs muddier and muddier, until his patience wore thin and he left the residential area for the city proper.

Soon he reached a tavern with the decency to keep its lights on past midnight. Men leaned from the balconies, threatening to drop their drinks below one way or another. A pair on the farthest corner noticed him and gave curious, apprehensive smiles.

There were, ironically, too many patrons to make a move on any.

He continued on his way. Around the corner and along the block was a quieter tavern closing for the night, the barmaid caught in the process of shooing a drunk from the stoop.

“Edgar --”

“A kiss, Miriam, just a kiss and I’ll go --”

Coming to a stop where it was obvious he meant business but not so close they’d see his eyes and nails, Vlad said a rough, “let her be.”

The drunk was a spectacle as he tried to turn, failed, and replied to the nearest wall. “Guess how much I paid.”

“And you clearly had your fill.” 

He teetered closer to Vlad.

Who neither flinched nor bowed, and displayed his colourless burns as if they were a handsome tan.

This was not someone worth debating; he found his balance and ambled down the nearest alley as fast as his reflexes would allow.

Glancing at the alley, then the tavern, then the alley, then the tavern, Vlad froze.

“Thank you, sir,” the barmaid said. The drunk was right. Even at the end of her shift she looked delicious, fit from waiting tables and in the best health you could expect from a peasant. Her brown hair curled in knife-cut layers from her chin to her shoulders, allowing a shifting, tantalising view of her throat. 

He could destroy her in any number of ways. The barbaric right through to the mundane, and he had, with plenty of women in plenty of establishments much like this -- love them and leave them, or if they protested, find a weapon and -- and --

It had hurt so much when Amakusa set him on fire. Beyond how it should have. There was no doubting why.

With a flick of his cloak he disappeared along the alley after the drunk. “Go inside. Keep yourself safe,” he said to the barmaid as he passed from sight.

The drunk hadn’t made it far. He’d skidded along the mud into another wall, where he was fumbling his fingertips along the bricks in an effort to stand unassisted. Hearing the shuffle and swish of Vlad behind him, he dropped his head back and looked over a shoulder. “What? Left the girl alone, what else’re you after?” 

“You’ve had your fill, I haven’t had mine.” 

“What?”

Darting forward the last meter and grabbing the drunk’s wrists he thrust them against the wall, pinning him prone. Before he had time to panic and resist Vlad drove his teeth deep in his neck and bit almost hard enough to tear through his throat.

Vocal chords in messy pieces, the drunk couldn’t scream. He lost the strength in his legs too swiftly to kick free. Unable to resist he drooled in Vlad’s hair and slumped progressively forward.

Within the minute it was done. Dropping the drunk on the ground and lowering his hood Vlad strode out the other end of the alley and tried to wipe the spittle from amidst his curls. He’d regained his colour; skin a humane shade of pale, eyes green. 

A simple kick of his feet propelled him a dozen meters forward, the next further. Soon he was on the outskirts of Lyon and headed for the Rayshift point. Bitter duty done for the night. He’d be here tomorrow, the night after that, so on -- this was closer to home than the other places he could visit, he was less conspicuous, the people less horrified by the prospect of dying on the fangs of some hideous storybook predator. It was normal. They didn’t know how impossibly cursed someone had to be to become like him.

That was the irony: he’d been so awful in life he’d been dragged out of Hell to atone for it, but in a body that continued to force murder, monstrous murder from him.

Perhaps the Grail could spit him out respectable and human but it hadn’t. 

In the eyes of God and history this was what Dracula was.

Nero and Elizabeth would keep pretending otherwise. It was comforting to think their actions in Chaldea could change their reputations. He knew, though, he knew what he was. It looked him in the face whenever he went a while without drinking. 

… his mood had dropped too far to tolerate their optimism. He swerved and made for a little hill near the summoning circle where he could keep an eye on the horizon and time his trip home with the rising sun. There were at least a few hours left. Plenty of opportunity to move past this pointless melancholy.

As he slipped between the trees, deeper into the wilderness, he noticed a flash of red nearby -- heading in the same direction at almost the same speed. A Servant, then. Swerving toward it the blur separated into a dark body with a vent of crimson in its face, then again into segments of armour, light, and prehensile metal tendrils.

“Lancelot!” he hailed the figure.

There was a low, mournful groan in reply, and Lancelot jammed his heels in the grass to brake.

Both men stopped, they gave each other a nod of respect.

“What brings you here?” Vlad asked.

Another groan. The tendrils rose around his shoulders in a wide array.

An average conversation with the Berserker-knight, then. “Looking for some peace?”

An  _ affirmative  _ sort of groan.

Progress. “As am I,” he said, “Orleans is much quieter than the other Singularities.”

Tilting his head and flaring his visor, Lancelot aimed the tips of his tendrils at Vlad.

“Ah. I’m being hypocritical.”

A nod. Lowering his stance, he was about to resume running --

“Why did you choose this for yourself?” Oh. There it was. He hadn’t quite intended to say it aloud but he was still a bit giddy from the drunk’s blood and there they were.

He replied with the only word he ever did:  _ “Arthuuur.” _ It ground out the slit of his helmet as if it’d gone through a hundred sets of teeth on the way. 

“And has it helped you atone?"

There was a silence between them.

Then Lancelot was on his way, unresponsive.

With the slightest sigh, Vlad turned on his heel, and ran back to the circle.

  
  


XXX

  
  


Slipping through the halls of Chaldea, careful to avoid its other nocturnal inhabitants, Vlad mostly found the complex dark and empty. His quarters were on the opposite side of the building so there was no shortage of sneaking to be done. Most of the blood was wiped from his chin but it wouldn’t feel truly clean until he’d had a splash in his sink, and a less barbaric drink to wash it down. A different type of red, perhaps; he could’ve sworn Gilgamesh had a few bottles.

The last room before his quarters was the library; a large space with perhaps 20,000 books across its ground floor and a mezzanine. Mostly non-fiction, mostly science and history. More than there’d been in his Wallachia and Transylvania combined.

Unlike the common room, the library had individual desks but no shared tables, which made it harder for the messier intellectuals of Chaldea to build elaborate book-forts around themselves. Consequently none had chosen it as their second home; they’d visit, take a few titles, and go to either a communal space or their room.

Being such an infrequent place for anyone to spend their time it was odd that it had its lights on this late. 

From the hall he could see the glare, in differing shades of yellow and white, testament to the inconsistent supplies and maintenance of the facility. People were inside. There was no route he could take to bypass them. Which meant he’d have to avoid attention by being as inconspicuous as possible.

Slowing himself to a casual speed, tossing his hair so it’d cover his face, he slid between the doors and continued toward the set on the other side. His pace was so measured he could’ve invented the metric system. 

Over halfway across, though, he saw desks occupied by piles of books and the slumped forms of two young women.

That gave him pause.

The woman on the right side of the room was fast asleep, her tail curled around a leg of her chair.

The woman on the left was staring into a dense page of text, squeezing her brow as if it’d make the words rearrange into a more comprehensible form. She pouted. Then as Vlad passed, she turned. “How was the trip?” Nero asked.

“Do I have anything by my mouth?” he replied.

She rolled onto her feet and, careful not to bump her book pile, wiped his cheek with her thumb. “Like a blemish. If anyone saw they’d think you were blushing,” she said, “I trust that’d be a lesser indignity, umu?”

“Inappropriate for a Prince.” He shied from her. “But fine for a human. Acceptable.”

With a little laugh, she sank back into her chair -- a rickety thing on uneven metal legs, like it’d been bought second-hand from a high-school. Her boots clanked against it as she fixed her posture. 

“What’re you doing here, Empress?”

“What do you think we’re doing here?” She pointed at her pile.  _ The Romanians: A History _ .  _ In Search of Dracula _ . A few others, every author’s surname ending in ‘-scu’. Taking  _ The Romanians  _ from the top she flicked through it with a smile. “Apparently you  _ are  _ named after us.” She glanced up at him.

He angled himself so she couldn’t see the embarrassed wrinkle in his browline.

“Maybe, since your Emperor isn’t here…”

“What’ve you been reading for?” he said, a bit curt, “with Elizabeth, too. I doubt it’s curiosity.”

She shut the book and returned it to the pile. “In case there’s a catalyst we overlooked.”

He scoffed. “In France? Rome, London, Persia?”

“It’s a shame, watching such a proud man bow to his fate,” she said, “when your legend is about doing anything but. What happened to the Dracula who lit his capital aflame to eradicate the nobles who made a mockery of his family?”

He cringed. Burning Targoviste’s clergy to death was precisely the kind of deed he’d been damned for. Ask Amakusa, Jeanne, whichever holy hero you liked, they’d confirm it. “He was turned into a monster as punishment.” When word of his actions went beyond his borders they called him the new Nero. “Didn’t you do the same to Rome?”

“Did I?” she asked, with a bored look. Standing from the desk she dusted her skirts and stepped closer to him.

Gazing to the library mezzanine he avoided her eyes.

On heels or tiptoes, she couldn’t interrupt his sightline, so she grabbed his scarf and forced him to her level. “People say a lot about us.”

Then, slow like a rusted gear, she turned -- pulling him along -- to look at Elizabeth sleeping on the other desk. There was a book hooked over one of her horns, rising and falling with her breath. She must have been cold.

“We can handle the rumours. Should she have to?”

He could spare his scarf. Yanking it from Nero’s hands, Vlad crossed the room and put it over Elizabeth’s shoulders. Compared to how it sat on his it seemed wide and thick, and covered the worst bits of exposed skin. 

She murmured, unwound her tail from the chair leg, wound it around another, and adjusted the scarf to a less effective position on her upper arms.

He sighed through his nose and returned to Nero. “Don’t let her search too long,” he said, “but if she wants to believe I can be human, I suppose that’s harmless enough.” He fixed the sagging collar of his shirt so it covered his entire throat. 

Nero smiled. “See? You’re not so bad.”

Continuing to her desk, he took the top books from her pile and hooked them under his arm. They were lighter than expected, and their rough paper dust jackets felt liable to tear as he dug his claws in.

The glass door to his lonely residential area was dark. No-one had been home to turn those lights on. With Chaldea’s resources limited as they were, Romani discouraged leaving them running.

He walked toward it with level steps, pressed it open, and slipped through; but as it shut he put his free palm to the pane in a sort-of goodnight to Nero.

She continued smiling, paradoxically proud of her vassal’s renewed sense of self-determination.

The corridor was dark, but he could see ahead without any trouble.

**Author's Note:**

> when I minored in Ancient History I did not anticipate its primary value post-graduation would be writing anime Emperor Nero flirting with Dracula, but here we are.
> 
> also: both books cited near the end are real, and totally worth reading if you want to know some cool Vlad Tepes facts, for instance, that he requested to be buried under the altar of his favourite monastery so every prayer said there would flow through his corpse and increase his chances of going to heaven. Interesting guy. Shame about the whole impaler part.


End file.
